


Words

by alylynn122



Series: A Shepard by Any Other Name [1]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Abusive Parents, Angst, Child Neglect, Earthborn (Mass Effect), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Family, Hurt/Comfort, One Shot, POV Garrus Vakarian, Post-Mass Effect 3, Sad Shepard (Mass Effect), Sole Survivor (Mass Effect), protective Garrus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 20:30:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12778920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alylynn122/pseuds/alylynn122
Summary: A name is one of the first things we learn to write. It is the sound that defines us, the word people call, a title lovingly given by our parents upon our birth. But for Shepard, a name is something entirely different. All of her names have been earned, and she has no recollection of her birth name.. Until she receives an email from a person she thought didn't exist. When her past comes rearing its ugly head, Garrus is there to comfort her.





	Words

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warning for mentions of sexual assault 
> 
> Content warning for anyone with neglectful or absent parent issues 
> 
> This work is part of a series, and I plan to post more oneshots in it, although probably out of order, eventually. In this, Garrus and Shepard are married, and the war has been over for a while. See the notes at the end for spoilers if you are worried about the content warning.

The minute he walks in, Shepard’s datapad hits the desk face down. Her back is to him, her hair hiding her features from view. Behind her head, the Normandy SR-1 model gleams in its case, attracting his eye like every time he enters. She still hadn’t added another ship to the case.    
  


She doesn’t turn to greet him, doesn’t say a word, just stares at the desk as though searching for an answer.    
  
“Shepard?” he asks gently, stepping in fully and closing the door behind him.    
  
“Samantha.”    
  
Her tone is flat, lifeless, devoid of character or emotion. The word is tasteless, holds no meaning to him, and apparently none to her.    
  
“...What?”    
  
She turns then, and he takes a step closer. Her brow is furrowed, eyes shining dully in the low-lights, lips pressed into a flat, colorless line.    
  
“That’s my name…. Samantha.”    
  
To anyone else, she might have seemed apathetic. But Garrus knows this woman, and can see the tremble in her lips, the fury of her white-knuckled grip on the edge of the chair.    
  
“Shepard, what’s going on?”    
  
He walks up behind her, lays a hand on her shoulder and reaches for the datapad. She doesn’t resist, doesn’t move to stop him. Instead, she watches him carefully, waiting.    
  
It doesn’t take Garrus long to see the problem.    
  
He reads silently, his hand tightening on her shoulder with each word. The screen is filled with words, shapes that hold meaning like, “family”, “love”, “sorry”, and worst of all, “ours”.    
  
“This is from….”   
  
“My father,” she finishes for him, grinding out the words with a tight throat.    
  
“Shepard….”    
  
She takes the datapad from it. Her eyes roam the screen, squinting with focus in the same way she scopes out her shots on the battlefield, until she finds it. She hands the screen back to him, pointing at a word.    
  
“Samantha,” she says, “Samantha Brown, that’s my real name.”    
  
He looks at the screen, reads the shape of the words. Such a bland, lackluster name. This was  a name for another human, it would fit any other human. But not her. Not  _ Commander Jane Shepard. _   
  
And he knows Jane is just a title, what humans name their nameless. He knows this from the way she bristles when people call her it, from the way she snapped at him when he tried to use it. In all of her life, Shepard has only had one name. A name given to an unwanted orphan after finding family in a gang that sought only to use her. A name that defined her, turned her into what she is, has guided her life. To her, Shepard is her only name. Jane is a moniker, an empty word for her Alliance application because they wouldn’t let her leave the space blank.    
  
“It’s been almost thirty years…. And now? Now, they….”    
  
Her voice catches, anger and hurt hot in her throat. Looking at her, her green eyes emblazoned with tears she has carried for thirty-five years, her patchwork skin and angry, red cracks that glow beneath it, her jaw set hard enough to creak as she chewed on words she couldn’t say, couldn’t fathom how to say.    
  
He takes her hand and pulls her up into his arms, throwing the datapad back on the desk without watching it skid.    
  
“Shepard,” he says again, helplessly. He isn’t sure how to comfort her, doesn’t know what to say. Because he is Garrus Vakarian. Has always been, and always will be. He may not have always known what he wanted from his life, but he has always known who he is, where he comes from. He’s never sat up at night staring a picture of his planet, wondering where on it he came into being. He has his mother’s eyes, his father’s smile, and his grandfather’s drive. He has his family, so much a part of him that he wears their colors on his face like a badge.    
  
Shepard has never had any of that.    
  
She trembles as she cries, hands wrapped tight around his carapace, her head buried in the crook of his chest between his arms. He feels her tears salt the rough skin of his plate, hears the shaky breath she inhales as she tries to set her shoulders and fails, and he glares down at the datapad as though he can see the writer of the offending message. He doesn’t know the man, has never considered what he might look like, but suddenly, all he can think of is how satisfying it would be to watch the life leave eyes he has never seen, and hopes Shepard never has to see. All to punish the person who put those sounds in her throat, took her voice and filled her lungs with tears.    
  
_ We knew you were ours.  _   
  
He nearly growls, but manages not to. Instead, he smoothes a hand up his mate’s back and pulls her away, guides her down the steps and away from the words that have turned her life upside down.    
  
They fall onto the couch together, her limbs tangled in his. He situates himself, sits up and pulls her down, leans her head against his chest and holds her there. Deep in his lungs, he croons a low vibrato to soothe her, hopes she can feel the love fueling the note.    
  
_ Ours.  _ _   
_ _   
_ Something to be owned, someone to be claimed. But no one had claimed her when she was pulled from the wreckage of the Citadel. No kin stepped forward to help her learn to eat, walk, and talk again. While he was missing, Shepard was in the hands of Alliance staff and had her care overseen by Hackett. Trapped in a body that refused to listen to her, she had fought herself for four months while he had fought to get back to her side. They’d crossed galaxies in FTL, he’d lived on starvation rations and dressed his wounds with re-used, washed gauze and the smallest dabs of medigel possible. He had fought everything, risked everything, to get back to her.    
  
But these… people. These people who never taught her how to shoot, where to find food, how to fly. These people that never watched her laugh, smile, or cry throughout her childhood. These people who had left her alone at five-years-old, barely a fledgling, in the streets to survive on her own.    
  
These people think they get to claim her.    
  
And now, now that she was a hero, now that she toured the galaxy overseeing treaties and alliances and rebuilding, now that she was  _ someone _ ….    
  
Garrus had only once known the pain of being noone. Stepping off the convoy on Omega, grief still clamped between his teeth like a bullet at the loss of her, he had known what it was to be alone.  But only symbolically. Somewhere, even if he hadn’t wanted to think about it, his family had been searching for him. Someone had missed him. He meant something to someone.    
  
Up until the Alliance, the only family Shepard had ever known was one she had to earn, and continually earn, through either selling her body for money or killing for drugs. Love was nothing to her, it was a vague concept of affection, but to her, love only came to people who were useful. Love was a violent word, it was a concept for the thing that kept her up at night, aching for something she could never define. It was pain, longing, hope that caused her to keep returning every time the gang beat her, a need for affection and belonging and  _ family _ that almost got her killed.    
  
Were it not for Anderson, that’s all she would have ever known.    
  
_ We love you, and we are so sorry. _   
  
Yet, somehow, love has become a violent word again. Now it means facing demons and memories she has long since buried. For Shepard, after the Normandy, she had learned “family” meant people who were there for her, who fought for her and supported her. But later, that word too had turned sour. Awake after two years, fresh from the dead and still bruised from the slab, she’d watched her family turn her back on her one by one. The Alliance, Tali, Kaidan, Anderson, Liara, the Council…. She was once again defined by her use, brought back wearing an invisible leash pulled by the Illusive Man. No matter that it was long, she was still bound.    
  
And where were these people then? Garrus had watched her walk through her own ship like a ghost, brushing past people who saluted her and revered her only for what she was. A title, a threat. A token guard dog to throw at the Reapers and Collectors to scare them.    
  
“Garrus?” she asks, small, uncertain, the child in her looking up through her gleaming eyes.    
  
“Who am I?”    
  
Commander Shepard, Savior of the Citadel, Vanquisher of the Collectors, Sole Survivor of Akuze, First Human Spectre, Destroyer of Reapers, Hero of the Krogan. She’d gone from having one name to having hundreds. Every language had a title for her, every planet had a statue erected in her honor. Ships, babies, and colonies were named after her. Jane’s Revenge, Shepard’s Hope, Commander’s Wrath. These ships accompanied them on their PR tour following the war, transporting them from crowds to adoring crowds.    
  
But for all of these names, they still weren’t who she was.    
  
“You are my friend, my mate, my wife. You are a warrior, a defender, a fighter.”   
  
Shepard frowned and turned her head away, but he caught her chin with his talon and lifted her gaze back up to his.    
  
“You are a terrible dancer, you are a great cook but only with things you can microwave, you are a terrible shot in mid-range combat, you are a sarcastic brat, you are a questionable moral figure, you are puncher-of-reporters, a person who whispers snide remarks in the council chamber.”    
  
At this, she laughs meekly, resting her head back against his chest and looking up at him with so much trust he thinks his heart will burst.    
  
“You are Shepard. And you are not  __ theirs. ”    
  
She closes her eyes and bites her lip, and he is lost in her again. Somehow, for some reason, she chose him to be hers. He’d been by her side through it all, from best friend to boyfriend to husband, he wouldn’t change a thing. He’d seen her get most of her scars, watched her charge across a battlefield through his scope. He’d been at every battle, every funeral, every up and down in the last five years.    
  
And he knew, deep in his bones, the same way he had always known his own name, that this woman was no one’s but her own.    
  
“I love you,Garrus” she whispers against his chest, arms tight around him and fresh tears drying on her cheeks.    
  
He leans down and kisses her, brushing her hair from her face and pressing his lips against her own before resting his forehead on hers, eyes closed and sharing the same breath.    
  
“I love you, too, Shepard,” he says without a hint of uncertainty. She smiles against his lips.    
  
It is not much. But it is enough.    


**Author's Note:**

> For context, this is the letter Shepard gets: 
> 
> To: Commander Jane Shepard   
> From: Unknown
> 
> My name is Thomas Brown. This letter is from me and my wife, Rebecca Brown. I’m not sure how to say this, but we are your parents. I know, this is hardly the time to come walking back into your life. I’m not asking for a relationship, but I wanted to let you know we are out there. Your mother has a wall full of your holos from the headlines. We’ve been following you on the news, ever since we first saw you when you were in the papers for becoming a spectre. We took one look at you, saw my eyes and your mother’s face, and we knew you were ours. We don’t really have an explanation for you, and I’m afraid I don’t have any answers for the questions you no doubt have. At least, not answers I can put in this message. We never wanted to leave you. From the day we parted, not an hour has passed since I didn’t think of you. Your mother cried every night for years. It might be hard, after all of this, but I wanted you to know you have a family. You have parents who love you and care for you, and we are so proud of you and who you’ve become. Ever since you were little, your mother told me you would change the world. And now look at you! Our little Samantha has become a woman, and has done great things. That is your name, by the way, dear. Samantha Brown. 
> 
> We love you, and we are so sorry. Maybe you will find it in your heart to forgive us, and we can be a family again. I am sure your little brother would love that. 
> 
> All our love,   
> Mom and Dad.


End file.
